You’ve probably seen the stories about the five American Muslim men who were arrested in Pakistan this week after traveling to the country to join up with the jihad. But according to this article in the Wall Street Journal it was all pretty sad sack affair. The five tried to hook up with several Pakistani terrorist groups with at least loose ties to al Qaeda but were consistently rebuffed for either being too lame, too inept or simply for having poor terrorism references.
The first strike out foreshadowed the rest …
A Pakistani intelligence official said the men first tried to join a religious seminary in Karachi that has ties to Islamist militants. But they were turned away because they couldn’t speak Urdu, seemed to have a limited grasp of Islam and didn’t have any “references” from trusted sources, such as other militants or sympathetic imams, the official said.
Even the FBI won’t give them any respect. In an email to Congress, a Bureau representative wrote: “We currently have no information linking them to terrorist organizations and the FBI was looking for them solely because their families were concerned for their safety and sought our assistance” after the five went missing after Thanksgiving.
